The outside of Holmdene, one of the many buildings affected by the outage – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
Recent power outages across campus
By Ashlyn Armock, Arts Editor
On Sept. 29, Aquinas experienced a partial power outage that resulted in the delay of classes and many class cancellations.
An alert was sent out to students through both the AQ C.A.R.E.S app and the MyAQ app on Monday at 5:29 a.m. stating that “Campus is currently experiencing a partial power outage. Consumers estimate power to be restored by 8 a.m.. Please quickly and calmly evacuate the location according to emergency response instructions.”
Another alert was sent out at 7:04 a.m., delaying all classes until 10 a.m. resulting in the cancellations of many classes. Students were instructed to look for updates from professors and instructors on CourseConnect.
“I have an 8 a.m. on Monday and it got canceled.” Anna Comden said when asked about how the power outage affected her day. “I got to sleep in and finish a book. It was great, but we were supposed to review for a test that day and we still had the test on Wednesday. So that was a little upsetting but it was still super nice.”
With Wege also being one of the buildings affected by the outage, Ryan Wiltzer, director of dining services, shared how they had to handle the lack of power. Wiltzer explained that the day started with the sous chef coming at 5 a.m. and then starting a text thread letting everyone know that power outage had also affected Wege. “It just kind of turned into a game plan,” said Wiltzer. “I mean, we have the generator…That powers part of the building, but not everything. So we pretty much had to figure out what we were going to do for breakfast that day.”
Then the group started planning what they would do for both lunch and dinner. “Because the longest time we’ve been out without power since I’ve been here was about three days.” Wiltzer said.
“We were able to provide food for students in the morning, we just had to change some things a little bit.” Wiltzer said. The swipe mechanism was not working at the time, so they set up a table near the door and manually entered who swiped into Wege. They were able to add these entries later in the day. “And then the menu had to change a little bit because not all of the kitchen equipment worked. It was more of a continental kind of thing, but we were ready, we were on time.” Wiltzer said.
The outside of Regina, one of the many buildings affected by the outage – Photo by Ashlyn Armock
The power was finally restored by 9:35 a.m. right before classes were supposed to start up again but still some students found that it affected the start of their day. “I had a one o’clock class that day.” junior Avery Andrews said. “But still it made it harder to get up and do things before class because the power outage just kind of put a bit of a rude start to my day.”
The outage affected many buildings on campus including Regina, St. Joseph, the Art & Music Center, Wege and Holmdene. Although the power was returned, students and staff found it to be a disruption to what would normally be a typical Monday morning.
The Saint 